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WE CARE A LOT | 31 Years

In November 1985 Faith No More released their debut album We Care A Lot. This year they returned to their roots and reissued this seminal record with great passion, adding unheard original demos and brand new mixes.Due to this reissue there has been a focus on this 31 year old album in the press and many wonderful interviews have got the band talking about their early days, revealing some fantastic insight into the debut album.The re-release of this album also led to an unprecedented return of Chuck Mosley to front FNM at two amazing shows in LA and SF.Here we look back over the release in the words of the band members.

“We didn’t really fit in anywhere. When we started, our closest peers were a band called Glorious Din: we’d rent halls and put on shows together, because getting onto the established club circuit was tough. [Legendary SF promoter] Bill Graham still ran the local scene, and was pretty hardcore about shutting down punk clubs, even though that scene represented no threat to his world. It was hard for us to find our place initially: we were invisible in the media, and if we played to 40 people that was a good crowd for us. But, oddly, perhaps, we never doubted ourselves, we were very self-confident about what we had, always. We’d made eight track demos with our friend Matt Wallace, and sent them to all the clubs but nothing came back, so we were like ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with the songs, so they probably just don’t like it because it doesn’t sound good enough.’ So that’s when we pooled our money to make a 24 track recording.”

“The studio was set up in a farm and it was free from any distractions. We only had three days to record, because we only had so much money. Matt had a little eight track studio at home, but I don’t think he’d ever worked on 24 tracks before, so it was a new experience for all of us. We were very military about it, we did a lot of pre-production so that when we went in we didn’t waste a single second. There was zero fun: we just worked, slept on the floor and start recording again as soon as we woke up. We recorded everything in two days and mixed it on the third day.”

Faith No More interview with Bill Gould: ‘We were playing this weird music and we just got lucky’With Faith No More’s long out-of-print debut album finally getting re-issued, founding member Bill Gould tells us how he found the original master tapes in his basement and we premier unseen live footage from 1986

"We met Ruth and she wanted to distribute the record, but we only had half of it recorded. She said, 'No problem, I'll put up the money for the other half.' She gave us this ragingly great deal where after a certain amount of years, we got the rights to the album back, and that deal is one of the reasons we’re able to re-release this record now. It was an extremely fair one-page deal in a time that was famous for record deals being the worst, a lot of bands practically signed their lives away. This was Ruth’s first release on Mordam and she was absolutely fantastic, we owe her everything."

SF Weekly | 10.08.2016Faith No More Will Re-Release Its Out-of-Print Debut After Founding Bassist Bill Gould Discovered The Masters

On We Care A Lot song

"It was both serious and tongue-in-cheek. You have to look at it through the time that it was written. Everybody was exploiting their humanitarian values. There was a lot of self-congratulatory bullshit going around that we were kind of making fun of."

"For me it’s important because WCAL was our first foray into 24 track, professional recording. Prior to this record everything we had done was on 8-track either in my parents’ garage or at my studio in Oakland, California.It was the first time that we had the ability to spend a few days at a time completely focused on the creation of music without one or some of us having other obligations whether it be school, or work, or something else. The 6 of us were together 24 hours a day for 3 days in a row and, over the course of two long weekends, we were able to record and mix an entire album.For me it was our first opportunity for FNM to create an entire album that, while not necessarily a concept album, was the culmination of years of the band finding their sound and voice and also of me learning how to be an engineer and producer. I believe that it was my very first 24 track recording experience.Sometimes, as you’re working on a project, you are really excited and think that it’s the best music and recording in the universe. Then, a year or two later, you feel that you have grown past it and that your new music is so much better. But, after some decades go by, the band and I can finally listen to it almost like we are the audience that we made that record for. There is enough time and distance for us to actually appreciate what we did so many years ago.WCAL was also the first time that we were able to record Jim Martin as part of the band. I believe that all of the previous demos done on 8-track the guitars were played by Joe Pie or Bill Gould. So, it was the first time that the hard rock/metal balance was added to the group to achieve the vision of their sound. Jim brought a lot of power weight to the sound of the band and balanced out the melodic, classically trained keyboards that Roddy played.Again, it was a turning point because the band finally had the time and resources to create a world within an album."

“’We Care A Lot’ was our first professional recording in twenty-four tracks. It was then when the 'metal' nature of Jim Martin's guitar appeared, balancing Roddy's classic keyboard formation”, Wallace summarises, maybe unwillingly reflecting a key point in the way Faith No More would achieve their particular sound. Its members’ musical origins were primordial in the way their personal sound developed. So then there’s the question: how important were these suppousedly unalike influences when it came to achieving a sound with such a defined personality? Wallace shares his view and deepens on the matter. “Killing Joke, PIL and punk rock in general were some important influences, especially for Bill. At the same time, Roddy was constantly looking for melodic contrasts, and above that there were the metal and rock from Jim, who was very influenced by bands such as Black Sabbath or Corrosion Of Conformity. Mike Bordin was studying african percussion by then, and incorporated those concepts when playing rock. And Chuck sang in a kind of screamo-like way in the times of demos, but it was after the band and I asked him to sing more ‘like Frank Sinatra’ when he found the most melodic side of his voice”.

"In 1984 or 1985 we didn’t really know who we were, but we knew what we wanted. It was a time at which we wouldn’t get to do concerts easily, we weren’t rated, nobody cared about us. We had friends, yes, they came to see us and there was a little scene, but we weren’t capable of going on tour and those things you want to do as a musician. At the same time, somehow, we knew there was this something in our possession, although we didn’t exactly know what it was. My position was: “I’m not really sure where this is going, but I wanna take it as far as I can”. That was my perspective, but it isn’t something I’d had deep thoughts about, although I did have some certainties, of course. I wanted this to be the kind of music that can be felt in a profound, powerful, strong way… and the bass had to sound right. Those sorts of things, technical things, were present."

Adding Spice Amid the Chaos, an Interview With Faith No More's Billy Gould

“The drummer [Bordin] and I were getting our voice together. We were kind of learning how we worked together because he’s really prominent with the kick drum and he’s really down beat oriented and I was kind of learning how we worked together. I actually wrote the chords in ‘We Care a Lot’ but it didn’t sound ... [laughs] very good rhythmically because I did it by myself and we came into the rehearsal room and we were just fooling around with beats and he had this beat and I came and I put my bass to the beat and that was it. It worked real fast. We knew within two minutes that was the way to go. It was almost too easy and too simple but we didn’t catch ourselves and overthink it. It felt right and we just kept going.”

Noisey | 26.09.2016Faith No More Cares a LotRoddy Bottum, Billy Gould, and Mike Bordin look back on their game-changing, pre-Patton 1985 debut.Roddy Bottum

"A lot of that stuff was just me and Billy and Mike in this space we had in San Francisco. And we were really kind of like spiritual about what we would come up with. We had this whole concept of monotonous, hypnotic riffs that we would play over and over, which felt kind of cult-y at the time. We would literally spend hours creating these loops, and I remember the riff to "As The Worm Turns" was one of those things."

“I think ‘We Care a Lot’ is pretty damn perfect. It’s the first album I ever professionally sang on and I’m still proud of it. I might have slipped out of tune a little bit, but I don’t care anymore. I don’t give a fuck. I’m not a fuckin’ singer, I’m a piano player who gets paid for singing. I’ve seen millionaires fuck up and go out of tune on stage and on TV, so whatever. I think ‘We Care a Lot’ is still amazing, music-wise. Some of the songs could’ve come out today.”